


sublime

by starlight_sugar



Category: Campaign (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, F/F, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 02:26:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16965966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_sugar/pseuds/starlight_sugar
Summary: “The famous Doctor Luroon, the most skeptical skeptic, the most determined believer in science and reason, not scared of curses touching her at all. But the second they head for her family-”





	sublime

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of the AUcember series, a self-made challenge where I try to write a new AU one-shot every day. This was originally posted on Tumblr on December 3rd and is being cross-posted upon request. You can read all of the AUcember fics in the collection linked above.
> 
> With thanks to Tam, who understands the appeal and allure of witch Aava.

“You know what I think?” Tryst leans back, smirking with all the confidence in the world. “I think you’re cursed.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Lyn says. “There’s no such thing as magic, Trystan.”

He shrugs. “Suit yourself,” he says, and drops it, going back to… whatever he’s doing with her iPad. Lyn rolls her eyes and turns back to her desk, clicking through her emails and trying to ignore the way Tryst’s eyes keep flicking up to her.

The problem is, he might not be wrong.

It pains Lyn to admit it. She has been adamant this whole time, no matter what her professors in undergrad said, no matter what her colleagues say now that she has a doctorate. There’s no such thing as curses, archaeological or otherwise. She’s not going to get cursed just by poking around in a tomb. There’s nothing magical about what she does. History is concrete and corporeal, and there’s nothing mystical to it.

Except for the coins she has locked in her desk. She hates to say it, she hates making this connection, but ever since she got the coins, her life has been… strange.

She received them from a colleague she hasn’t seen in years with a terse note, something about determining the mysterious origin of the coins. And it was a mystery, one that Lyn had no idea how to crack. The coins looked like a mishmash of archaeological signs: too old to be from one region, made of a metal that they didn’t use in the next, with insignias that didn’t match the third. It was a puzzle. Lyn has always loved puzzles.

The problems hadn’t started for a couple weeks. It was little things at first, coincidences that couldn’t possibly add up to anything. Her apartment’s heating stopped working for a couple days, right after she determined that the coins couldn’t be Mesoamerican. She rolled her ankle the same day she identified one of the old obscure words on the coins as Latin, and broke a family heirloom after she figured out the next word was transliterated Japanese.

And then, less than two hours after determining that the coins were some kind of real gold alloy, she’d been hit by a bus.

(“Tapped lightly,” she said repeatedly, to anyone who would listen. Nobody was listening. Leenik had worked himself into a frenzy, and so had Bacta even though he was trying to act like he hadn’t. Only Tryst was even remotely calm, and so she’d found herself meeting his eyes in the emergency room. “I’m  _fine_.”

“Just bruised your shoulder,” Tryst said, but his face was unreadable. “Hey, what did you say you were working on earlier?”

“Those coins,” Lyn answered, and Tryst frowned. “What about it?”

He’d looked away. She didn’t understand why, but she was bleary with faded adrenaline and exhaustion, and she’d dropped it. She thinks she might understand now.)

Lyn bites her lip. “But,” she says, and she can feel Tryst’s eyes on her. “If I were cursed-”

“Oh my god.” Tryst sits upright in his chair. “It’s that bad?”

“It’s-”

“You’re actually worried about there being a curse?”

“I’m not worried about being cursed.” Lyn pauses. If she says this part, there’s no taking it back, but she owes him an explanation. She owes it to herself to say it out loud. “If there is a curse, and I’m not saying there is, I’m comfortable with it affecting me. I can get to the bottom of this mystery just fine.”

“But?”

“But I don’t want there to be any chance of it affecting anyone else.”

“Oh,” Tryst says. Lyn glances over her shoulder to look at him. He looks surprisingly sympathetic. “That’s very you, you know that?”

She arches an eyebrow at him. “Care to explain, Trystan?”

“No, I just mean.” He shrugs and offers up a careless grin, but she can still see the worry in his eyes. “The famous Doctor Luroon, the most skeptical skeptic, the most determined believer in science and reason, not scared of curses touching her at all. But the second they head for her family-”

“There’s no curse heading for you,” Lyn says firmly, but Tryst doesn’t look convinced. Shit. “I just- if there were a curse-”

“How do you get rid of it?” Tryst’s grin only widens. “I know a gal.”

“Please tell me you don’t mean the witch Leenik is always hanging out with.”

“Listen, Aava is a-”

Lyn groans and thuds her head against her computer monitor. This right here, this is why she hadn’t wanted to bring this up in the first place. She knew that this would be the answer, and it’s not an answer she’s particularly interested in. “Trystan, you cannot be serious.”

“Lyntel,” he intones, but there’s an actual warning there.

Lyn sighs. She’s never met Aava in person, only through the stories that Leenik and Tryst tell about her. The woman claims to be a practicing witch, but most of her stuff is herbs and astrology. It’s the kind of thing that Lyn knows is pseudoscience - no, not even pseudoscience, because there’s no science to it.

But she is Leenik’s friend, and Tryst’s too. So she can at least be respectful.

Lyn glowers at Tryst, who meets her eyes resolutely. “What do you think she can do to help?”

“I think it wouldn’t hurt to talk to her.”

“It could damage my brain cells.”

“Are you going to play nice if you talk to her?”

“I don’t want to talk to her.”

“You asked me for my help,” Tryst says, with a surprising amount of finality. “I’m telling you that this will help. Talk to Aava.”

Lyn rolls her eyes. This is pointless. She knows this is pointless. But Tryst is superstitious, and honestly so are the other two boys, and if this is what it takes to keep them calm… “Fine.”

“Fine.” Tryst sits back in his chair. “And don’t be too mean to her.”

“What, she can’t take it?”

“She can take it. But Leenik will be upset with you, and you don’t want that.”

“This is ridiculous,” Lyn says flatly. But something in her stomach is twisting, and she glances at the desk drawer where she’s keeping the coins. The roiling in her stomach only intensifies. “But I’ll talk to her.”

#

The second Aava walks into Lyn’s office, she points at the behind above her desk. “What the hell do you have in there?”

Lyn sits back in her chair, stunned. Aava is paler than she’d expected, and her dress is red and gauzy. She looks like a stereotype of a witch, pointed shoes and all. She’d expected Aava to be a fake, which is why she’d made a point of telling Tryst and Leenik that the coins were locked in her desk. And then, just before Aava dropped by, she made a point of moving them to the cabinet. That way, if Aava tried to say that she sensed a darkness in the desk, Lyn could cut her legs out from under her.

But Aava is pointing directly at the cabinet. And judging by her face, she’s spooked.

“I thought that Tryst told you what I have,” Lyn says cautiously. “The coins?”

“He told me you were worried about a curse, not that you had… that.” Aava shudders, and then turns. Her eyes flick up and down Lyn once, then twice. Lyn has to fight the odd urge to cross her arms. “Doctor Luroon.”

“Please, call me Lyn. Or Lyntel, if you’d prefer.”

“What would you prefer?”

“I’d prefer you take a seat.”

Aava smirks before going to sit in the corner chair, the one that Tryst normally sits in when he’s in her office. “You can call me Aava, by the way. Not that you asked.”

“I don’t know your last name.”

She taps her chin. “I like that. Gives me an air of mystery.”

“You could use all the help you can get when it comes to mystery,” Lyn says, to her own horror. It’s not catty, but it is… pointed.

Aava tilts her head. “You think I’m fake.”

“I don’t believe in any magic.”

“You called me here to talk about a curse.”

“I called you here to make Tryst feel better.” Lyn turns away, to her computer, but she can’t help but glance up at the cabinet with the coins again.

“Right,” Aava says. “If I’m fake, why did I know that you have an incredibly dangerous magical object in your cabinet?”

“Dangerous magical object?” Lyn repeats. “You think my coins-”

“Your mystery coins that got you hit by a bus?”

“Why are you all so insistent that the coins are magical?”

“Why are you so insistent that they aren’t?”

“Because there’s a difference between causation and coincidence,” Lyn says in exasperation. “I’m trying to do my job, not invoke the wrath of- of- of something!”

“Hell,” Aava says. “Like, literally hell. Your coins are from hell, Lyn.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

Aava flashes a sharp grin. “That time I was.”

“Great,” Lyn says. “That’s terrific. Let’s say for a minute that I’m cursed. What can we do to break it?”

“You don’t just break a curse like this.”

“I’m not about to pass it on.”

“No, because we’re going to destroy the coins.”

Lyn frowns. “We can’t do that.”

“And why not?” Aava drawls. “You like being cursed? I heard about the bus, you know.”

“The bus wasn’t that bad,” Lyn says immediately. “Whatever Leenik said-”

“Is there a way to get hit by a bus that isn’t that bad?”

Lyn scowls. Her shoulder is still bruised, not that that’s any of Aava’s business. “My point is that whatever these coins are, they’re not like anything I’ve ever seen. We can’t destroy them, we need to study them.”

Aava pauses. “Lyn,” she says cautiously, almost gently. “I understand your professional curiosity, but this isn’t the kind of thing you tiptoe around. These coins can kill you. These coins  _want_  to kill you. I’m pretty sure they’re going to want to kill me after this.”

“Then you had better help me figure out how to break the curse,” Lyn says frostily. “I will not let you destroy them.”

“Is there any talking you out of this?”

“I’m afraid not. I can always call another witch-”

Aava snorts. “Don’t even try me, Doctor, you’re lucky that you knew one. And you’re lucky that I like a challenge.”

“The coins are a challenge for you?”

Her eyes glint. “I mean convincing a skeptic.”

Lyn laughs, before she can stop herself. She leans towards Aava, and Aava leans right back towards her. “Nobody’s convinced me yet.”

Aava’s eyes drag up and down Lyn’s face. Lyn can feel heat rising in her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away, not even when Aava’s eyes rest on her lips for a second.

When Aava’s eyes return to Lyn’s, she’s smirking. “You haven’t met anyone like me yet,” she says, like it’s a promise.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr and Twitter @waveridden!


End file.
